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Wednesday, October 5, 2016

How to Help Build a Strong Staff From Day 1

We call all PD- Shark Academy

The tool we used to assess ourselves

(Elementary) school staffs range in age from year 1 of teaching to year 35+ of teaching. Men, women, moms, dads, married people, single people, divorced, widowed- with a staff of 60+ people, the lifestyles might seem endless. Usually grade levels spend most of their time together, and administration is busy spending small pockets of their day with each grade, trying to help solve problems and prevent other ones from happening. SO many times, I feel like people in one grade level, might not know anything about someone in a different grade level.

On top of the lifestyles and personalities that exist within a school, each person has a history of experiences that has helped them become who they are today. In order to build community and empathy with our staff, we recently held a professional development (during pre-plan) to get to know ourselves and others better. One of our wonderful teachers put this on, and rocked it! She explained what Myers Briggs was, and what information it can tell you. There are a total of 16 personality "types", each one with strengths and weaknesses.

Why it helped:
1. Brought self-awareness (An SEL component) to each person. We were able to see what strengths we had, and what things we can work on.
2. Brought social-awareness (another SEL component) to each team. Grade level teachers were able to see which personality type they were, and then see which ones their partner teachers were as well. If I am an extrovert, but my partner is an introvert, we clearly get energy from different places. I might want to give my partner more alone time so he/she can reenergize.
3. It opened up doors to people who have the same personality "type" that work in different grades/areas.

Close up of names of baskets

4. Community building occurred in less than 1 hour!

Food makes life better:)

To top it off, our work room was filled with some sweet treats. See these cute pics and feel free to use them to pump up your staff, and your community!